Music

Wilco frontman takes a more direct lyrical approach on striking new album

“...alienation seemed to be the point on Wilco’s overly arch art-rock projects Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, but on Sky Blue Sky Tweedy reaches out from his solitude in hopes of meeting his listeners—both the woman in the song and the strangers buying his CDs—face-to-face… The album’s title track contrasts our ‘rotten time’ of broken windows, stumbling drunks and marching military bands with such reasons for optimism as a blue sky and another day of survival. Five years ago, Tweedy might have emphasized the rottenness, but now he reinforces the optimism in his country-guitar strum, backed by Cline’s steel-guitar fills and in an elegant, slow-motion guitar solo. The fragility of such hopefulness is obvious from the thin, note-missing vocal, but the tune’s loveliness convinces us we can cling to hope with some confidence nonetheless.”